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Announcing the new Azure App Service
In a mobile first, cloud first world, every business needs to deliver great mobile and web experiences that engage and connect with their customers, and which enable their employees to be even more productive. These apps need to work with any device, and to be able to consume and integrate with data anywhere.
I'm excited to announce the release of our new Azure App Service today - which provides a powerful new offering to deliver these solutions. Azure App Service is an integrated service that enables you to create web and mobile apps for any platform or device, easily integrate with SaaS solutions (Office 365, Dynamics CRM, Salesforce, Twilio, etc), easily connect with on-premises applications (SAP, Oracle, Siebel, etc), and easily automate businesses processes while meeting stringent security, reliability, and scalability needs.
Azure App Service
Azure App Service includes the Web App + Mobile App capabilities that we previously delivered separately (as Azure Websites + Azure Mobile Services). It also includes powerful new Logic/Workflow App and API App capabilities that we are introducing today for the very first time - along with built-in connectors that make it super easy to build logic workflows that integrate with dozens of popular SaaS and on-premises applications (Office 365, SalesForce, Dynamics, OneDrive, Box, DropBox, Twilio, Twitter, Facebook, Marketo, and more).
All of these features can be used together at one low price. In fact, the new Azure App Service pricing is exactly the same price as our previous Azure Websites offering. If you are familiar with our Websites service you now get all of the features it previously supported, plus additional new mobile support, plus additional new workflow support, plus additional new connectors to dozens of SaaS and on-premises solutions at no extra charge.
Web + Mobile + Logic + API Apps
Azure App Service enables you to easily create Web + Mobile + Logic + API Apps:
You can run any number of these app types within a single Azure App Service deployment. Your apps are automatically managed by Azure App Service and run in managed VMs isolated from other customers (meaning you don't have to worry about your app running in the same VM as another customer). You can use the built-in AutoScaling support within Azure App Service to automatically increase and decrease the number of VMs that your apps use based on the actual resource consumption of them.
This provides an incredibly cost-effective way to build and run highly scalable apps that provide both Web and Mobile experiences, and which contain automated business processes that integrate with a wide variety of apps and data sources.
Below are additional details on the different app types supported by Azure App Service. Azure App Service is generally available starting today for Web apps, with the Mobile, Logic and API app types available in public preview:
Web Apps
The Web App support within Azure App Service includes 100% of the capabilities previously supported by Azure Websites. This includes:
- Support for .NET, Node.js, Java, PHP, and Python code
- Built-in AutoScale support (automatically scale up/down based on real-world load)
- Integrated Visual Studio publishing as well as FTP publishing
- Continuous Integration/Deployment support with Visual Studio Online, GitHub, and BitBucket
- Virtual networking support and hybrid connections to on-premises networks and databases
- Staged deployment and test in production support
- WebJob support for long running background tasks
Customers who have previously deployed an app using the Azure Website service will notice today that they these apps are now called "Web Apps" within the Azure management portals. You can continue to run these apps exactly as before - or optionally now also add mobile + logic + API app support to your solution as well without having to pay anything more.
Mobile Apps
The Mobile App support within Azure App Service provides the core capabilities we previously delivered using Azure Mobile Services. It also includes several new enhancements that we are introducing today including:
- Built-in AutoScale support (automatically scale up/down based on real-world load)
- Traffic Manager support (geographically scale your apps around the world)
- Continuous Integration/Deployment support with Visual Studio Online, GitHub, and BitBucket
- Virtual networking support and hybrid connections to on-premises databases
- Staged deployment and test in production support
- WebJob support for long running background tasks
Because we have an integrated App Service offering, you can now run both Web and Mobile Apps using a single Azure App Service deployment. This allows you to avoid having to pay for a separate web and mobile backend - and instead optionally pool your resources to save even more money.
Logic Apps
The Logic App support within Azure App Services is brand new and enables you to automate workflows and business processes. For example, you could configure a workflow that automatically runs every time your app calls an API, or saves data within a database, or on a timer (e.g. once a minute) - and within your workflows you can do tasks like create/retrieve a record in Dynamics CRM or Salesforce, send an email or SMS message to a sales-rep to follow up on, post a message on Facebook or Twitter or Yammer, schedule a meeting/reminder in Office 365, etc.
Constructing such workflows is now super easy with Azure App Services. You can define a workflow either declaratively using a JSON file (which you can check-in as source code) or using the new Logic/Workflow designer introduced today within the Azure Portal. For example, below I've used the new Logic designer to configure an automatically recurring workflow that runs every minute, and which searches Twitter for tweets about Azure, and then automatically send SMS messages (using Twilio) to have employees follow-up on them:
Creating the above workflow is super easy and takes only a minute or so to do using the new Logic App designer. Once saved it will automatically run within the same VMs/Infrastructure that the Web Apps and Mobile Apps you've built using Azure App Service use as well. This means you don't have to deploy or pay for anything extra - if you deploy a Web or Mobile App on Azure you can now do all of the above workflow + integration scenarios at no extra cost.
Azure App Service today includes support for the following built-in connectors that you can use to construct and automate your Logic App workflows:
Combined the above connectors provide a super powerful way to build and orchestrate tasks that run and scale within your apps. You can now build much richer web and mobile apps using it.
Watch this Azure Friday video about Logic Apps with Scott Hanselman and Josh Twist to learn more about how to use it.
API Apps
The API Apps support within Azure App Service provides additional support that enables you to easily create, consume and call APIs - both APIs you create (using a framework like ASP.NET Web API or the equivalent in other languages) as well as APIs from other SaaS and cloud providers.
API Apps enable simple access control and credential management within your applications, as well as automatic SDK generation support that enables you to easily expose and integrate APIs across a wide-variety of languages. You can optionally integrate these APIs with Logic Apps.
Getting Started
Getting started with Azure App Service is easy. Simply sign-into the Azure Preview Portal and click the "New" button in the bottom left of the screen. Select the "Web + Mobile" sub-menu and you can now create Web Apps, Mobile Apps, Logic Apps, and API Apps:
